This is a continuation from where I left off on my previous thread that I started in the wrong area for unity communities.
Here is the link to the previous thread, and please excuse the title:
Here is an update on the character design for the MC (I’m still not satisfied with the clothing, but I like the necklace - No idea what to do with the keyboard wristband):
Disclaimer: This is a thread that I’m treating as a development log update section for my account’s history. I would love to hear ideas and suggestions on what could be better done to learn the things I need to make what I hope to make for this passion/learning project, which I plan to come back to once I get enough money to hire others to help me work on making this a full-fledged title (that’s the plan at least from what I last said on the previous thread.)
There’s a very specific vibe that I’ve always wanted in my games.
Like this feeling of iconic homeness, where even if you haven’t played it just seeing an image about it makes you feel like you are intensely reminded of heavenly-level holiday nostalgia feeling.
I get this feeling for music I listened to and deviant art images on nightcore covers I saw while growing up.
Another thing I’ve been thinking about for the game today is how the MC is probably going to be capable of being in 3 different states:
1 - Old self, survivalist force of nature who yearns for freedom
2 - New self, a reset complete move on from the past either as a result of amnesia or reincarnation or something else
3 - Merged self, after an identity crisis with his past coming back to haunt him and remember who he once was, the version of his current self takes greater priority instead of doing a Griffith ‘sacrifice’ thing because he forgot a selfish dream and treats his actual loved ones as nothing more than a distraction in the grand scheme, meaning he actually instead considers all that grand scheme stuff a distraction away from the more meaningful and important loved ones he wants to protect.
I haven’t played Wuthering Waves yet, but I think I’m going to have to do that at some point soon.
Tomorrow and the day after I’ll be going to an anime convention that I go to yearly with my uncle, so I won’t be doing much for the project within that time but it is a goal of mine to have an artists booth for the convention myself one day, hopefully next year, but one goal at a time, we’ll see.
Smashcon, the anime convention I went to yesterday and the day before, was so cool this year and I had a chance encounter with SchrodingerLee, 100% unforgettable.
Now that I’m back, I’m going to go all out.
I thought a lot about how I would go about my scheduling since that’s always something I find to require a lot of thinking for me for whatever reason, so I’m going to see how it goes with trying to pull off a lot of different promises/goals I’ve made within a short amount of time, so that way certain prerequisite can be done AT THE SAME TIME as my active focus of game development, rather than it being prolonged which is the last thing I want.
Edit: I have to mention the crazy coincidence of the context that matters for when I met SchrodingerLee.
I was talking with my uncle after noticing just how good looking certain cosplayers were and was envious in a good way of how badly I wanted to get attention of people in the same way as those ones who stood out, and me personally I want to achieve that through good looks and fame, specially through projects that I develop while streaming which is what I scheduled for today as the passive promise/goal focus along side my active one which is this current game, and AS I was having that conversation without missing a second, SchrodingerLee was just there next to us who is the first ever streamer I’ve seen who got me inspired at the start of this year to actually aim for the lifestyle/adventure he’s got.
I got a photo with him and told him that I’m a huge fan, I have never actually felt that cliche geek-out moment in my life before personally, but that was by far the most insane coincidence yet, and it just makes me laugh at my life because I do actually have a lot of coincidences like that somehow, but personally this one was by far the biggest.
I’ve been studying business strategy and honestly I’m now on the fence about whether or not I should make the game a non-gacha, because the model is just too good and I’d reinvest it all back into the game anyways.
I went through the history of MiHoyo’s projects and where they got investment for starting their company, and it’s interesting to see that for now I should be focusing on making a demo to grab the attention of a passionate co-developer within a network rather than find the money to officially hire first.
After all, I need to make a game on my own first before I scale with the idea of management, as much as I look forward to it.
But at least I have a clearer picture now of what step 2 will be like, though step 1 is the hardest and slowest one.
I downloaded Honkai Impact 3rd on my iPad just now which is the first iPad game I’ve played since angry birds, and it’s honestly amazing.
I’ll try to aim to learn what it takes to publish an IOS/Android port of my project once I get to that stage too, and since I like to perfect my milestones I’ve listed so far into things like a concerting phase, a 3D modeling phase, an animation, a coding, a writing, an SFX phase, etc, perfecting a phase specifically dedicated to reward and unlockables systems for things like weapons and customisability would be satisfying too.
I think raven blue hair will be best for the samurai look, and he won’t have a shirt under his jacket.
The reality modding abilities for general use will be in a wrist band that projects holograms to interact with as a keyboard replacement instead of a literal keyboard attached to him, and for combat mods he will have a programable sword, so I guess in this world carrying weapons around is established as regular enough to not seem off since there are a lot of conflicts happening between the two worlds.
edit: wait, no, now I’m drawn between two clothing styles that I don’t know which to choose. Either soft jacket with a hoodie and no shirt underneath, or a more punkish but organized rebellion (almost looking cyberpunk attire). I even have a look for the female variant of the MC that I’d like to use too. Very similar hair of course. My ideas for the male and female MCs are inspired by Yato from Noragami and long-haired Mikasa from AOT (if she were a gothic samurai):
I’ve been asking around for extra advice on Reddit and I think it’s painted a clearer picture of what my first finished project should be that can hopefully make me the money through indie-dev to then have it be reinvested back into this serious passion project.
Like I said though, that’ll be the second step and the first step right now I am committed to, even though technically I could learn and make a project that will actually make me money instead at the same time, is making a functioning alpha build of just the starting zone entirely on my own for all aspects of the game’s development.
My expectation with this is that through doing so I will right after be able to immediately and swiftly pivot to a indie-level project on my own, or with a helping hand gained through sharing my progress in this passion project like I am right now in order to gain the attention of anyone who is interested, and create that game that is intended to make a profit big enough to start my own studio.
I plan for that intended to be finished project to not ever really finish as continuous updates will be dealt and is also a passion project and not just being used as a ‘means to an end’ for strictly financial purposes.
I’m thinking that either that indie-game will either be a visual novel or something like MiSide, but we’ll see later.
My personal deadline, whether I’m able to pull it off or not, for this alpha build of early game for my HoYoverse inspired game should take me 2 months, but even though I’m consistent the pace I’m going at isn’t nearly enough to be able to reach that goal, so I just got to work harder and longer.
I have my story now perfected (not dialogue though which is the main thing…), but I will be keeping the details to myself to prevent spoilers.
AHAHAHA! LOSERS YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD READ MY EARLIER DEV BLOGS TO CRAFT YOUR GAME THEORIES XD
Writing dialogue and having an atmosphere/type-of-beauty for the game to settle on both in theme of environment visually and the pacing of the story is hard to do through writing alone, so I think I’ll focus on the gameplay style to find that theme.
I’ve been playing Honkai Impact 3rd for reference since I really want to make the game mobile and release it and have it be expanded in updates rather than putting it as purely a ‘to be continued’ project because HI3 is such a great inspiration, so I guess this is offically going to be more than just a learning experience then and will be my money maker right from the start.
The gameplay from it is what I’m going for, but to make it unique and with more exploration than it just being a level-by-level play space, I will like to include an open world to be explorable as well, kind of like the chapter 2 school campus where I’m up to playing so far but doesn’t need to be limitedly accessed through the main story, and then the actual levels will be activated through NPC interactions with this starting zone actually being an ‘explorable menu’ or safe zone instead of sorts, rather than being in a menu UI to do the mission selection like in HI3.
Each level will likely be as simple as in HI3 for now though, but with each expansion later chapters should hopefully introduce new mechanics and entirely different playstyles that fit something closer to a more grander vision, though that better gameplay idea isn’t something I’ve even thought of yet, I just started this project liking the vibes in Zenless Zone Zero as you could walk around its ‘starting zone’.
Sorry if that’s wordy, I don’t know how else to explain it since I’m thinking of it on the fly.
I’ve been doing some serious research the past couple of days:
Playing a bunch of Honkai Impact 3rd, blue archive, and a bunch of other MiHoYo games but on PS5 and WuW.
trying to follow the decisions made by the original CEOs of MiHoYo in chronological order and the ideas they had behind them.
Asking AI to help me mind map the situation I am in in relation to my goals to make a game development studio compared to the decisions made by MiHoYo’s early years, as well as what legals are worth considering now or later such as trademark and how to actually register.
And just to sum it all up, this is the biggest slap in the face of reality I have ever experienced in my life.
I have no reward money or business program partnership, no monetisation agency or angel investors, no reason for an angel investor to want to risk investing in me, and in no way of having my current game idea if worked on for a YEAR to even get close to breaking even or self-funding enough for continued expansions despite how much lower in scope I keep redesigning it for.
I’m now researching EXACTLY what scope I should focus on, and what sort of things I should do in order to actually be considered as someone to be invested in by an angel investor or another means of funds, such as kickstarter which is also an option though I’d need to develop a community which that too I need a better idea on what that would look like.
The CEOs of MiHoYo started out with less than 7 people total before the creation of Honkai Impact 3rd, but they created Gun Girls Z before that with I think like 4 or more, so somewhere between 4-7 people worked on the game that made their studio offical WITH the support of an angel investor in an at the time NEW industry. Now it’s all over saturated and 80% of the money made from games come from less than 0.5% of the games, most of which are titles that have already been around for years, not new releases!!
Man… I’ll come back hopefully with these questions answered, and hopefully the scope, business plan, and marking strategy is actually doable with someone like me without a budget, and if I NEED budget, screw it I’m getting like 3 part time jobs for the next 6 months then.
Oh wait, I could actually go and get a job as a game developer for an already established company for someone else. That would be kind of cool actually.
Maybe my first goal is all the way down to portfolio more so than my own product as my project.
Working for a company first sounds like a great idea. Getting funding recently is nearly impossible. Even a game like ALZARA Radiant Echoes shut down. I think it had staff from Blizzard and raised around $350,000 USD on kickstarter (mainly to show investors that people are interested in it).
These forums are also a bit dead nowadays so don’t be too surprised if you don’t get many views. My guess is that more people just ask ChatGTP rather than checking forums.
If you do want to look at working on a game as a side project I’d recommend using some programs to help create the base models. I think the following are free to use in games: MakeHuman: realistic characters. I tend to avoid this due to the uncanny valley effect. VRoid Studio: I only noticed this today. Not really sure how good it is but it’s for anime style characters.
Yo!!! Thank you so much! Vroid looks awesome to use for early development projects, so I’ll be giving that a go maybe for the up coming GMTK game jam.
Yeah, even though these forums are pretty dead I just like the idea of having a place where my journey is recorded is shared to be read in archive later by whoever, I am making posts on Reddit, soon YT again and even X/bluesky (though I don’t know much about posting to there compared to Reddit).
I’m trying to currently follow the advice from people on discord to find committed collaborators to work on building a startup game that will get us both portfolio work for a potential job in industry, and hopefully enough money from its project so it can self-fund future expansions kind of like Houkai Gakuen or Honkai Impact 3rd.
I’m also going to try and bring the game me and some people work on together for GMTK to a networking event in my city, hopefully I’ll be able to find people who are interested to join the unofficial studio with the same goal of making a legitimate, trademarked one later down the line.
The plan is to make a bunch of portfolio games along side a single first major title over the course of 3-8 months, 2D or 3D is still to be discussed thoroughly among other design and business plan considerations first.
@CodeKiwi it’s actually really hard to find collaborators, not to mention committed ones I can imagine.
Since you’re here, are you interested in doing the GMTK with me?
Thanks for the offer but I think I’ll have to pass. I haven’t used GameMaker before and if I did a game jam I feel like I’d end up doing an all-nighter. I normally prefer to just work on my own projects at my own pace.
Epic massive update, I’m not the only one who wants to test the position of commitment between the two of us while working on our major project together, but I managed to get the attention of a professional 3D environmental artist who has been working in the industry for 6.5 years. We’ll be moving to Unreal Engine though because that’s what works for him and art is the main consideration for the ARPG on mobile I wish to make.
He has a lot of free time to contribute to something that hopefully grows big, and so far he seems pretty invested in my goal of making a studio as a path.
I just have to quickly rant that.
Back to work now, see ya!
A team of 3 artists who have merged with us who can do 2D concept art and 3D-art(character and environment if I remember correctly?)/VFX/3D-animation (if that is all correct)
me as designer and producer
the 3D environmental artist who is our art lead
our C++ coder
a newly added anime character artist
and a 3D environment and weapons artist (but he is probably asleep right now so hasn’t noticed he’s been accepted lol).
The only role left to focus on is to find a SFX/music-artist who isn’t busy to help make the SFX and OST, which is just as important as the 3D character artists.
[Update]
Almost done with the story and setting. Gameplay is being iterated in order to be more unique since that’s as important as it being fun in general is.
There is a point to make that this game is supposed to be fun as opposed to ‘enjoyable’ since dark souls for example doesn’t fit into both, but that’s as much as I’m going to overthink it.
I had a call and booked an interview with the college I studied at so that way I can try and complete the units I failed when studying game design and production right out of high school and failed to get the advanced diploma on the second year, but due to reasons I have to wait till the end of next year to do those units again, not to mention that the year after that in 2027 is when I’d be allowed to begin a third year for obtaining a bachelor degree to my name, but considering the pace of how busy I am now with my own project and that as I’ve said before I am now keeping in mind that I cannot predict the future, who knows maybe I won’t even need to get the networks offered by the school to take advantage of to get my first secure job in the industry or even be hired in the first place considering what I’m managing to do so far for myself.
On the side now that I feel that I’m able to create more time for myself outside of just research and planning for the game project I will at least put a portfolio together for the reinterview anyways as well as work on a little something special to start representing the standard of our team’s skills to the internet and grow an audience beforehand; hint: @ZannirYT is a big inspiration for this ‘side hustle’.
And lastly, I have chemical burns on my face because my skin isn’t used to using 1% concentration of retinol since I’ve been midmaxing my beauty regimen for skin, hair, and overall vitamins and minerals ever since the end of Smashcon (the anime convention) because of that awesome coincidence of how I was envious of all the good looking cosplayers the exact moment I met SchrodingerLee.
Oh yeah, and a week before the interview with the college I’ll be going to a networking event as previously mentioned in the city that has been recommended to me throughout my entire life history of being on and off this now at last focused career path/passion, so hopefully I will build industry connections and get more people on the team or even get hired if I can make some friends some day with people I meet in the Industry there every month.
